Welcome to episode 19 of The Spectrum. This was recorded on June 6, 2025. In this episode we’re going to do a brief history on the origins of Pride and talk about why it’s so important to the LGBT+ community.
Let’s start by talking about what we mean by Pride. Or at least what it means to me. I won’t pretend to speak for anyone but myself. This is the time of year where we see an explosion of Pride related posts on social media. It’s not uncommon to see comments on these posts like “pride goes before a fall”. It seems the very notion of LGBT+ Pride offends some people. The response I mentioned is a paraphrase of Proverbs chapter 16 verse 18 from the Old Testament. It’s a statement about the need to be humble. That’s not the same thing we’re talking about with LGBT Pride. When we talk about Pride, it’s about not being ashamed of who you are. It’s not al all the same things as what the Proverb is saying. Are you proud of the work you do? Are you proud to be an citizen of your country? Are you proud of your ethnicity? That’s the kind of pride we’re talking about.
Pride is about not living in a closet. It’s not about arrogance. This kind of pride – the idea of “this is who I am” is actually not at all arrogant. It is honesty. It is an unwillingness to lie.
My sources for today’s episode are Wikipedia, the History Channel and the Library of Congress. I’m actually a bit surprised the latter source is still online given the current administration’s hostility to anything that isn’t straight, white and male. I’ll have links to these sources and some other related info in the show notes.
The immediate catalyst for what grew into Pride Month was the Stonewall Uprising in June 1969, but the roots go back much further.
In the early 1900’s there were several organizations that lobbied for gay and lesbian rights. One organization was the Society for Human Rights founded in Chicago in the 1920’s. After World War II, organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis published gay and lesbian positive newsletters and were more vocal in demanding recognition for gay and lesbian people. These organizations laid the groundwork for the LGBT rights efforts that followed but are not as well known as they should be. If you are think a followup episode dedicated to one or more of these organizations would be interesting, let me know.
Though these groups made some progress, there wasn’t much. During the McCarthy era, being gay was considered a security risk because those in power thought that to be gay was to be morally weak and susceptible to blackmail. It would get you fired from a government job and that was often true in the private sector as well. In June 1969, in New York City, it was possible to be arrested for being gay or lesbian. Police regularly raided known gay bars and rounded up people suspected of being gay. And merely being there was enough reason to justify suspicion. You could be fired from your job for being gay. You could go to jail for being gay. Despite these risks, lesbian, gay and transgender people sought out places where they didn’t have to lie about who they were. It was a place where, if only for a few hours, they didn’t have to pretend.
For context, the Vietnam War was raging. Richard Nixon was in his first term of office. The Apollo 11 moon landing was about two weeks in the future. The Cuyohoga River in Cleveland had recently caught fire. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated the year before. It’s fair to say that it was a tumultuous time in America.
The Stonewall Inn was a bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. It was not a high class establishment, to put it mildly. It was owned by the Mafia and operated outside the law. It didn’t have a liquor license and was technically a private club because it was illegal to serve alcohol to gay people. The police were paid so-called “gayola” to turn a blind eye. There was no running water behind the bar. Toilets frequently backed up.. It was a place that operated on the fringe of society. Not many would choose to go if they had better options. But, it was one of the few places available to LGBT people in New York City.
It’s important to understand the context here. To be gay was to be illegal. Society had so shunned gay and transgender people that the only outlets they had available were in the worst parts of a city. Most gay bars were not owned by gay people but by straight people out to make a buck off the backs of people who had nowhere else to go. They were invariably places that involved risk simply to go to. That risk could just be getting to and from the bar as it wasn’t uncommon for gay people to be attacked. If you made it there safely there was the danger of getting arrested in a police raid. If that didn’t happen, you had to survive getting home and running the possible gauntlets of harassment or physical attack.
Despite the payoffs, police raided frequently, on average about once a month Raids had stepped up in the area the week before. Then came the night of June 28, 1969.
Police raids were often tipped off but the raid that started at 1:20am on Jun 28th was not. The normal police procedure was to line up the patrons and check their identification. Female officers would take patrons they perceived to be women to the restroom to verify their sex. Anyone they considered to be a male that was crossdressing would be arrested. But, that did not happen that night.
The men refused to produce identification. The women would not go with the female officers. The police decided to arrest almost everyone. Those suspected of cross-dressing were separated in the back. Those who were not arrested did not disperse but stopped outside and a crowd began to form. Within minutes more than 100 people had gathered.
The police called for transports for the large number of people. The first wagon transported Mafia members and bar employees. There was a delay before the second wagon arrived. A drag queen was clubbed in the head by a cop when she hit him with her purse. A lesbian, in handcuffs, kept escaping from custody. An officer hit her in the head with a baton after she complained her handcuffs were too tight. According to the Wikipedia article, she looked into the crowd and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?”. When an officer picked her up and tossed her into a police wagon, they did.
By this point the crowd had grown to between 500 and 600 people. They began trying to overturn police vehicles, slashing tires and pelting the cops with whatever was at hand, including bricks from a nearby construction site. The first to riot were homeless gay youth. For them, the Stonewall Inn was the only place where they found acceptance and, pushed to their limit, they decided to fight for it.
The Police moved back into the bar along with the 13 people they had managed to arrest and barricaded themselves in. The Tactical Patrol Force was called in to free the trapped police officers. By this point, the bar was on fire though there are conflicting reports on how it started. When the TPF arrived, they tried to clear the streets. They were met with a chorus kick line. I’m not making this up, there were a line of people singing and dancing. The cops waded in with their batons.
By 4am the streets were nearly clear. Thirteen people had been arrested. The first arrest was a straight, white man. It was the activist folksinger Dave Van Ronk who had been nearby and attracted to the commotion. Four police officers were injured. The bar was severely damaged.
The next night, rioting again broke out though the Stonewall Inn was not open. Open displays of same-sex affection were seen on the street, something that was illegal. One witness said, “From going to places where you had to knock on a door and speak to someone through a peephole in order to get in. We were just out. We were in the streets.” This time there were thousands of people in the street. The TPF was called in again and it again took until 4am to clear the streets.
There was not much violence over the next three nights. Weather put a literal damper on activity. The Stonewall Inn was closed from damage, but word about what had happened spread quickly and a new era in the gay rights movement was sparked from its wreckage.
While the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had been around for nearly two decades, new organizations like the Gay Liberation Front were appearing. These were the first organizations who used “gay” in their name.
One year later, the “Christopher Street Liberation Day” on June 28, 1970 marked the first anniversary of the riots with an assembly. There were simultaneous marches in Chicago and Los Angeles. These were the first gay pride marches in US history. The next year saw marches expand to Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin and Stockholm. In 1972, Washington DC, Philadelphia and San Francisco, along with other cities had joined in.
For many, Stonewall marked the start of the gay liberation movement. This isn’t strictly true. There had been organizations working for gay rights for decades and there had been marches, but the Stonewall Uprising marked a new and very public focus on LGBT rights.
It was because of Stonewall and the subsequent marches and the work of so many LGBT people that laws and attitudes began to change. Fifty five years have passed since that first march. It is no longer illegal to be in a same-sex relationship. Same-sex marriage is recognized throughout America. Transgender and non-binary people are more visible than ever.
Frank Kameny, a prominent activist who died in 2011, said in 1994 that prior to Stonewall there were 50-60 gay groups in the country. A years later there were at least 1,500. Two years later there were at least 2,500. That was the impact of Stonewall.
Gay Pride marches and festivals are not what they were in the early 1970’s. Instead of being a demand for the right to exist, they have become a celebration of progress. At least until 2025 where attacks against transgender people have made it clear that while progress has been made, we need to continue our efforts to remain visible and make it clear that an attack against one part of our community is an attack against all of it. Stonewall may have gone down in history as the birth of the modern gay rights movement but transgender people were a big part of what happened there. Now, when they need us the most, we must stand united as a community. It’s the right thing to do but if that isn’t reason enough, it’s clear that if they succeed in trying to eradicate transgender people from being visible in society that the other letters of the LGBTQA coalition will be next.
I was a child when Stonewall happened. What rights I enjoy today were won by the hard work of people who were not willing to stay in the closet. I was among the first generation of people for whom it was less risky to come out publicly. Most LGBT people who were older than me faced much greater risks to come out. Despite that risk, many did and their efforts made my life a little easier. In my discussions with people that are younger than me, they are finding it even easier to come out. Many are finding the courage to do so at a younger age and, especially for transgender people, this can make their lives much easier if they are met with acceptance and understanding.
But, this increased visibility is facing push back today. The people sitting at the highest levels of our government are actively hostile, especially to transgender people and they are using every means at their disposal, legal or not, to try to make LGBT people invisible. They are trying to make us feel less human than other people
If you claim one of the letters of the LGBT+ alphabet, stay strong. June is our reminder that others fought back rather than accept persecution. I’m not advocating violence, but I am advocating that we stay visible and speak our truth and to stand up in our dignity and tell the world that we exist and that we have every right to do so. and that we remember what Pride means and that we endeavor to live it every day. That isn’t to say that it is safe for everyone to be out. But, for those that are, we must continue to work to make it safer for everyone.
If you are a straight, cisgender person and you managed to make it this far, then thank you for your attention! If you were a little vague on this whole Pride thing then I hope this helped clarify why it’s such a big deal to us and why we all go a little rainbow crazy in June. If you have an LGBT+ person in your life, maybe a relative, coworker, or neighbor, let them know that you get why Pride is such a big deal. If you hear someone else gripe about Pride then speak up. We could use your support, especially now.
If you have a story related to LGBT life, positive or negative, reach out to me at spectrumpodcasthost@gmail.com. It could be a coming out story. Maybe it’s a story about how you supported a child or friend. Whatever it is, sharing these stories, humanizing the subject, is all a part of what Pride is.
If you want to learn more about the history of Pride, check out these resources:
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